Tuesday 5 August 2014 14.29 EDT
First published on Tuesday 5 August 2014 14.29 EDT

An archaeology museum in Philadelphia has made an extraordinary find in its own storage rooms: a 6,500-year-old human skeleton.

The Penn Museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania, said the skeleton was believed to have been a man at least 50 who stood 5ft 9ins (1.75 metres) tall.

The skeleton was stored in a coffin-like box with no trace of identifying documentation.

Skeletons from the same time period, particularly complete remains, are extremely rare, the Penn researchers said. They hope a skeletal analysis will reveal more about the population's diet, stresses and ancestral origins.

The remains were originally excavated from southern Iraq around 1930. University of Pennsylvania researchers working with a team from the British Museum unearthed the remains at the site of Ur, an ancient city near modern-day Nasiriyah.

Janet Monge, the curator-in-charge of the anthropology section of the Penn Museum, had known the skeleton was in storage, but researchers were not able to determine its significance until a project to digitise records was undertaken, officials said.

The effort enabled the researchers to link the skeleton to the field records of Sir Leonard Woolley, whose team excavated the site where it was uncovered.

The burial that produced the skeleton was cut into deep silt, indicating that the man had lived after an epic flood, leading Penn researchers to nickname their rediscovery Noah.